Feeling “Weightless”…

Still proud of this review; even more proud of the bit of great feed back it has gotten. I really can’t wait to wrap up my newest on Toh Kay (Tomas Kalnoky) and his debut “Streetlight Lullabies”. I’m really getting the hand of this amateur music journalism thing and enjoying my work, which in my opinion is the greatest payoff I could ask for. 

Thanks for reading.

aurallyspeaking:

To be honest, I’ve been trying to start this thing up since July. If I’m being really candid with myself, it has been even longer than that (2007 to be exact). While I have a more extensive collection of privatized attempts at reviews, I finally decided to quit trudging through the long drawls of exposition and just push myself. I kept grueling myself with the task of getting to my favorite, most personal bands and cherished albums first. That was entirely too difficult and really wasn’t the best way to start. So I just hit the ground running and tackled something more manageable. I think it was easier for me to accomplish that with this album because of the lack of vocals and lyrics. Focusing on the structure of songs based on instrumentation alone was easier and ultimately proved to be accomplishable. Being that I’m more of an instrumentalist anyway, I was able to wrap my head around it. I sat down with the 46 minute behemoth of an album and in an hour span (I had to stop and play parts back) managed to scratch out a ravenous 2,000 words. That’s more than I accomplish on an average attempt; almost double the amount. I’m super fucking proud of myself. Admittedly, I have the lure of writtenkitten.net to thank. 

“Weightless” has helped set the tone for my NaNoWriMo this year by providing the spacious, sweepingly dense vacuums of deep space with some incredibly suiting instrumentation. It brought my Sci-Fi world alive. It is a hell of an album. So much so, that I’m ready to declare it the best of 2011 by the year’s end. Record labels are good at a lot of things: for Prosthetic Records that is a hell of an understatement. They were more than willing to push Tosin Abasi and fund his way through an album. After the disbandment of his original band, Reflux, PR approached him about a solo attempt to which he initially declined, but then thankfully jumped on board with to the approval of the fans. Tosin stepped into the studio and proved that he wouldn’t be fucking around. Please, if you have the heart, go check out the self-titled debut of Animals as Leaders. While I’d love to rave about it, it is a massive beast deserving of recognition at some other juncture. Fortunately for us, he did say yes and graced us not only with that, but the masterpiece that is “Weightless”.

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